of The College of Wooster • Freedlander Theatre
THE OHIO LIGHT OPERA PREMIERE
KISMET
(1953) Music by Alexander Borodin • Lyrics and Adaptation by Robert Wright and George Forrest
Book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis
Broadway shows featuring music by famous classical composers became popular with Sigmund Romberg’s Blossom Time (melodies of Franz Schubert), and reached their zenith with the mid-century stage adaptations of Robert Wright and George Forrest, who raided the melodic drawers of Grieg (Song of Norway), Villa-Lobos (Magdalena), and Rachmaninoff (Anya). Their greatest success was their setting of Edward Knoblock’s 1911 play Kismet to the exotic and lushly romantic music of Russian composer Alexander Borodin. Crafty Baghdad street poet Hajj has worked his way into the confidence of the power-crazy Wazir, who plots to wed the young Caliph to a bevy of foreign princesses. However the Caliph has fallen for, but lost track of, Hajj’s daughter Marsinah. When the Caliph discovers her among the Wazir’s harem, he is heartbroken. Only some fast thinking by Hajj reunites the lovers, disposes of the evil Wazir, and allows Hajj a desert oasis holiday with the Wazir’s lush widow, Lalume. The magical musical score features such favorites as “A stranger in paradise,” “And this is my beloved,” “Baubles, bangles, and beads,” “Fate,” “The olive tree,” and “Rhymes have I,” as well as engaging comedy numbers for Lalume (“Not since Nineveh”) and the Wazir (“Was I Wazir”).
JUNE 19, 24, 26, JULY 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 17, 24, 28, AUGUST 5
THE OHIO LIGHT OPERA PREMIERE
GYPSY
(1959) Music by Jule Styne • Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim • Book by Arthur Laurents
The Ohio Light Opera celebrates the extended golden anniversary of what for many is the quintessential Broadway musical. Famed New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr said it best: “I’m not sure whether Gypsy is new fashioned or old fashioned…. The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s the best damn musical I’ve seen in years.” Based loosely on the autobiography of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, the show triumphs in its portrayal of Gypsy’s stage mother, Rose, who pushes her two children—Baby June and Louise—into show business, not for their benefit, but rather to live vicariously the career that she herself never had. When the more talented June runs away with a boy, Rose shifts her attention to Louise, who fills in for a stripper one night and begins a meteoric rise as striptease queen Gypsy Rose Lee, with increasingly little need for her mother. Only when Louise overhears her mother, on a bare stage, giving the performance that life and circumstance denied her does she begin to understand her mother’s need for attention and how similar they really are. Gypsy contains some of Broadway’s most instantly recognizable tunes: “Let me entertain you,” “Everything’s coming up roses,” and “Together,” as well as what is considered perhaps the greatest of all show overtures.
JUNE 22, 26, 29, JULY 2, 7, 9, 17, 23, 29, AUGUST 4
THE COUNT OF LUXEMBOURG
(1909) Music by Franz Lehár • English Book and Lyrics by Nigel Douglas
Original Book and Lyrics by A.M. Willner and Robert Bodanzky
Barely had the world recovered from the sensation created by The Merry Widow than its composer Franz Lehár did it again with his 1909 Viennese operetta The Count of Luxembourg, which remains to this day one of the supreme gems from the Silver Age of Viennese operetta. The story, originally written for a Johann Strauss operetta more than a decade earlier, centers on a plot hatched by Prince Basil to secure an aristocratic title for the opera singer Angele, whom he wishes to wed. He arranges that she first marry—and soon thereafter divorce—the penniless, and thus easily bought, Count René. The concocted wedding takes place with René and Angele on opposite sides of a screen, never within view of each other. Plans to keep the newlyweds totally apart go awry—the couple meet and fall in love, each without realizing that it was the other who was opposite that wedding screen. Lehár’s music—replete with sensuous waltzes, toe-tapping marches, and jaunty polkas—created almost the same frenzy around the globe as those in The Merry Widow.
JUNE 25, JULY 1, 10, 16, 22, 29, AUGUST 5
IOLANTHE
or The Peer and the Peri (1882) Music by Arthur Sullivan • Libretto by William Gilbert
Very few things British escaped the satirical pen of William Gilbert—their parliamentary system was no exception. In Iolanthe, politicians, laws, males, and class snobbery have no chance in a world in which women, in the guise of fairies, call the shots. The forever youthful fairy Iolanthe married a mortal some years before and bore a son, Strephon. When his beloved, the shepherdess Phyllis, sees him embracing his mother, she misinterprets their relationship and agrees to marry instead a member of the House of Lords. As revenge for this insult, the Fairy Queen uses her powers to put Strephon into Parliament, with the goal of wreaking havoc. Sullivan’s score, ever melodic, is arguably his most ambitious, with harmonies reminiscent at times of Mendelssohn and Wagner. Highlights include the Fairy Queen’s “Oh, foolish fay,” the mighty chorus of the Peers: “Loudly let the trumpet bray,” and the Lord Chancellor’s “When I went to the bar” and the devilishly difficult “Nightmare song,” the patter song to end all patter songs.
JUNE 30, JULY 10, 13, 16, 24, 30, AUGUST 7
THE GYPSY PRINCESS
(1915) Music by Emmerich Kálmán • English Book and Lyrics by Nigel Douglas
Original Book and Lyrics by Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach
More than perhaps any company in the world, The Ohio Light Opera has championed the stage works of Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán. With nine titles produced thus far (and more to come), OLO reprises for the 2010 season the most globally popular of all the composer’s works: The Gypsy Princess (Die Csárdásfürstin)—not seen at OLO since 1993. Budapest cabaret star Sylva Varescu, at her farewell appearance before leaving for America, tries desperately to disengage herself from her love for Prince Edwin. Rather than lose her, he pledges his troth in front of the night club guests. His parents, however, won’t tolerate a singer as a daughter-in-law and plan for him an aristocratic marriage with his childhood sweetheart, Countess Stasi. Only a last-minute disclosure about the younger days of Edwin’s mother removes all roadblocks to the marriage of the happy couple. The Gypsy Princess belongs to that rarified group of musical theater works in which every song is an acknowledged gem. Famed novelist and librettist P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote the lyrics for the Broadway adaptation of Die Csárdásfürstin, declared that “the Kálmán score was not only the best that gifted Hungarian ever wrote but about the best anybody ever wrote.”
JULY 8, 14, 15, 20, 23, 30, AUGUST 1, 6
THE OHIO LIGHT OPERA PREMIERE
EL CAPITAN
(1896) Music by John Philip Sousa • Lyrics by Thomas Frost • Book by Charles Klein
In 31 seasons, The Ohio Light Opera has presented 106 works from the lyric stage repertoire. Of those show titles not yet produced, none has been requested more than John Philip Sousa’s stirring, swashbuckling, and hilarious El Capitan, the most successful of more than a dozen comic operas of America’s revered March King. The newly appointed viceroy of Peru, Don Medigua, has his hands full in repelling the scheme of the deposed viceroy, Luiz Cazarro, to regain his position. To further their ends, each engages, unknown to the other, the services of the famous Spanish mercenary El Capitan. Don Medigua receives word that El Capitan has drowned and concocts a plan to impersonate the mercenary and provide his services to both sides, with the predictable (and sometimes unpredictable) confusion, all the more so because he is sought in marriage by Estrelda, the daughter of his rival. In addition to the many expected songs and ensembles in march time—including a rousing choral version of the famous El Capitan March that he extracted from the show—Sousa has provided lilting Viennese-style waltzes, the highly comical “A typical tune of Zanzibar,” a drinking song, and a foot-stomping first-act march number for Estrelda and chorus that would do Verdi proud.
JULY 15, 18, 22, 27, 31, AUGUST 6
PATIENCE
or Bunthorne’s Bride (1881) Music by Arthur Sullivan • Libretto by William Gilbert
In none of their 14 collaborations did Gilbert and Sullivan deal as directly with contemporary society as in Patience. Designed as a mere spoof of the aesthetic movement that was sweeping England, the work was so popular that it wound up actually enhancing the movement. With an initial run exceeding those of both H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, Patience remains a fascinating portrayal of the fanaticism that can accompany social fads—something not totally foreign to our time. All the village lasses except the milkmaid Patience worship the pretentious poet Reginald Bunthorne (modeled after Oscar Wilde). She sets her heart on her childhood sweetheart, the handsome Archibald Grosvenor. But to love such a perfect creature is selfish, she reasons, so she turns her attentions to the boring Bunthorne. The other maidens now desert him for Grosvenor, who is ultimately convinced by his rival to de-aestheticize and become commonplace. But Bunthorne’s plan backfires. Sullivan’s score bubbles over with melodic gems: “Love is a plaintive song,” “When I first put this uniform on,” “The magnet and the churn,” and the irresistibly engaging Bunthorne-Grosvenor duet “When I go out of door.”
JULY 21, 25, 31, AUGUST 3, 7
